


Unsettled

by Eggling



Series: daemon au [3]
Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (1963)
Genre: Gen, daemon AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-13
Updated: 2019-05-13
Packaged: 2020-03-02 16:05:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,538
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18814303
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eggling/pseuds/Eggling
Summary: The Doctor reveals the nature of his daemon to Jamie.





	Unsettled

“Ye cannae just leave us in here – wait!”

Jamie threw himself at the door as the guard slammed it shut, only succeeding in making his palms ache as he bounced off its shiny metal surface. Teárlag hissed and spat at the guard’s daemon, prowling back and forth and peering through the crack underneath the door, but Jamie simply turned back towards the others, sinking down to sit on the floor. His chest was still heaving from struggling against the guard as he had shoved them inside, but otherwise he found himself feeling curiously calm. Only a few days ago, this cell would have been beyond anything he could have imagined, let alone the world outside. But in that time he had seen a city underwater, and fought metal men on the moon, and met people hypnotised by giant crabs. Now, staring out through a small, porthole-like window at the purple sky of an alien planet, anything seemed possible.

“We’re not going to stay stuck in here, are we, Doctor?” Ben asked. “They’ll never fix things without us. We’ve got to escape.”

“What good will that do?” Polly argued. “They already think we’re the ones who destroyed their power supply. If we try and escape, we won’t be able to convince them that we’re wrong.”

“And if we stay in here, we’ll die,” Ben exclaimed. “Didn’t you hear the Doctor saying the planet’s started falling to bits?” He paused, glancing over to the Doctor. “How long have we got?”

“Ah -” Shaking down his sleeve, the Doctor checked his watch. “About half an hour until total disintegration, I think. Perhaps a little longer.” He frowned down at Jamie, his head tilted to one side quizzically. “You’re very quiet, Jamie.”

Jamie let out a huff of nervous laughter. Too many thoughts were whirling through his head for him to tell which was troubling him the most. The idea that the Earth was thousands of miles away, the undeniable reality that they had travelled in a time machine, and the fact that their time machine had been taken away from them were all vying for position in his mind. At last, he settled upon the most immediate of his worries. “I dinnae even understand what’s going tae happen to the planet.”

“Well -” The Doctor sat forward, clearly relishing the chance to explain despite the danger they were in. Perched on his shoulder and flapping their wings to keep their balance, Siannu looked as eager as he did. “This isn’t really a planet, you see, Jamie. It’s much too small to hold itself together. The people who live here will one day be famous for their custom planets, but they haven’t quite figured out the knack to it yet, so as the power drains, the glue holding the planet together will start to come apart.”

“Oh.” Jamie exchanged a dubious glance with Teárlag. The Doctor’s waffle was as confusing as ever, but one thing was clear in their minds. “I think we should help them.”

“Excellent.”

“But how are we gonnae get out?” Standing up again, Jamie turned to frown at the door. Its solid mass of metal seemed impenetrable save for a thin row of bars at the top, which gave him a flash of hope. Sharing his thought, Teárlag sprang up onto his shoulder, and he lifted her towards the bars. She shoved her face at them, but a moment later let out a hiss of disappointment, shaking her head.

“Narrower than my whiskers,” she complained as Jamie set her back down on the floor. “What about Actaeon?”

Polly’s ermine-daemon shrank back at her words, coiling more tightly around Polly’s shoulders. “How would I get back up? Siannu ought to do it.”

“They’re too big,” Jamie argued. “An’ Kay too,” he added, nodding to the gannet perched beside Ben. He sighed, hanging his head. “I dinnae even know what they could do out there tae free us.”

“One of the guards has a key,” the Doctor said simply. Something about the calm softness with which he said it told Jamie that he had known the solution all along, and had merely been waiting for the rest of them to catch up. “He left after we were locked up. All that’s needed is to take the key off his belt.”

“Ach, that’s no good,” Jamie said, scuffing his boot against the door. “He’ll be too far away. We’d need a witch’s daemon as well as a smaller one.”

The Doctor’s smile turned strangely self-satisfied at his words. “Precisely.”

Before Jamie could so much as open his mouth to ask the Doctor what he had meant, Siannu had hopped from the Doctor’s shoulder to his wrist, tilting their head from side to side in an odd way that was reminiscent both of a real bird and the Doctor himself. “Did you see where he went?” the Doctor murmured.

“Of course,” Siannu replied.

The Doctor held his arm out, and Siannu swept into the air in a blur of motion. It seemed to Jamie that they had disappeared entirely, but Teárlag’s keen cat eyes narrowed in on a small insect perched between the bars on the door. Her fur bristled at the sight, her eyes slitted dangerously. To Jamie’s alarm, she swept around to fix her furious gaze on the Doctor.

“ _Witch_ ,” she spat. “You’re no’ - you’re no’ _natural_.”

“I assure you, it is perfectly natural,” the Doctor said mildly. Jamie startled, wheeling around to face the others only to find them all smiling knowingly at him. Siannu’s display had already set him on edge, but the Doctor directly addressing his daemon was beginning to push things too far – though how else were they to communicate, he supposed, now Siannu was gone?

A thousand questions were whirling through his mind once again – _why, how, were you born like this or were you separated, what if something happens to them, how can they change forms like that_ – but when he came to open his mouth, he only found himself able to ask one. “Does it hurt?”

“Not anymore.” The Doctor’s expression was a familiar one – gentle, reassuring. Jamie did not find himself soothed by it. “Ah – it did. The first time. But that was rather different – not by choice, you might say.”

“You’re no’ human.” It was hardly as if he had not known, but this had driven it home in a way he supposed few other things could. He knew he ought to have been surprised that the Doctor’s daemon could change as readily as that of a child, but the chilling horror of seeing someone without their daemon filled his mind.

“No.”

“Can all your people do this?”

“Some of us, after a certain… rite of passage, I suppose. You’re taking this rather well, you know.”

“I’m no’ really sure how else tae take it,” Jamie admitted, letting out a nervous laugh. “An’ anyway, we’re in a prison cell. It’s no’ really like I can run away screamin’ about witches, even if I wanted to.”

“You don’t seem quite so convinced.” It took Jamie a moment to realise that the Doctor was talking to Teárlag again.

She slunk forward, her stomach fur dragging along the ground, then thrust her head up to sniff at him. “You’re whole,” she said at last. “A wee bit strange, mind, an’ I dinnae understand how you’re no’ settled, but there’s nothin’ wrong with ye.”

The Doctor laughed at that. “Of course there isn’t anything wrong with us. You weren’t that far of with _witch_ , you know.”

“I’ve never heard of a witch’s daemon changin’ like that,” Teárlag said, still sounding a little wary.

The Doctor’s smile widened. “No, I don’t suppose you would have.”

Giving one last huff, Teárlag darted back to wind her way around Jamie’s ankles. Her ruffled fur had smoothed again, but she still regarded the Doctor with a touch of suspicion. Jamie shivered, feeling the thought that had so unsettled her, and he reached down to pick her up and clutch her against his chest. “Don’t ye miss them when they're gone?”

Before the Doctor could answer, a small bird flitted in through the bars, coming to rest as a butterfly on the tip of the Doctor’s nose. As they shifted forms, a key dropped into the Doctor’s lap. “Never for very long,” he said with a smile. “The separation does get rather uncomfortable after a time. I doubt that we shall ever be entirely used to it.” Getting to his feet reluctantly, he crossed to the door and slipped the key into its lock. He opened the door only a crack at first, but threw it open with a chuckle a moment later. “It’s quite alright. They didn’t leave a guard on the door.”

He hurried out, and Ben and Polly followed him quickly, casting grins back at Jamie as they went. Jamie hung behind for a moment, holding Teárlag tightly. Siannu was settled back on the Doctor’s shoulder in their usual form, almost as if they had never left, but there was still something unnerving about the sight of them.

“Stay close,” he murmured.

Teárlag’s claws dug into his shirt, and he felt his own discomfort coursing through her. “I will.”


End file.
